Quentin Tarantino is gearing up for another ride in the saddle. For his first movie since 2012's Django Unchained, the director is going back to the Western genre with a script called The Hateful Eight, which he hopes to direct this summer, according to sources. (Another source said there is no timetable at this stage.)

The title suggests Tarantino could be upping the ante, playing off the title of John Sturges' 1960 film The Magnificent Seven, which in turn was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Seven Samurai.

No one has been cast yet, but Tarantino has reached out to veteran casting director Victoria Thomas, who worked on Django, to work with him on casting the movie, say several insiders. A part has been written for Christoph Waltz, who starred in Tarantino's Django and Inglourious Basterds.

Pilar Savone, who served as a producer on Django and acted as an associate producer on Tarantinoís Inglourious Basterds and Death Proof after being his assistant, is producing Hateful Eight.

Itís unclear who is financing and who will distribute, although the Weinstein Co. is the most likely candidate to be involved in both capacities, due to its long-standing relationship with the filmmaker.

In November, Tarantino revealed that he was working on a new script and that it would be a Western. But he didnít reveal a title or suggest a timetable for making it. Tarantino has in the past mentioned projects he was working on but ended up shelving them. Basterds famously took a decade to hit the screen as he worked and reworked the script.

"I had so much fun doing Django, and I love westerns so much that after I taught myself how to make one, it's like 'OK! Let me make another one now that I know what I'm doing,'" Tarantino told Jay Leno in November when he appeared on The Tonight Show.

Tarantino has long loved the Western genre and in the post-Pulp Fiction era in the mid-to-late 1990s tried to adapt Elmore Leonardís 40 Lashes Less One, about two prisoners, an Apache and a black soldier, who must hunt down five outlaws to earn their freedom.

I remember reading about that Killer Crow movie, had forgot all about it. I think it was meant to be tied in with Inglorious Basterds somehow. He's probably got a load of ideas that never came to fruition

Moviegoers eager to return to the Wild West with "Django Unchained" writer-director Quentin Tarantino shouldn't hold their breath, as the filmmaker has reportedly put his ensemble western "The Hateful Eight" on hold after the script leaked.

According to a Deadline report, Tarantino gave the script to a handful of actors and one of them or their representatives allowed it to get out into the wild. Tarantino is so irate over the leak that he will now no longer direct the film as his next project, he said. Instead he plans to publish the screenplay and possibly revisit it in the coming years.

"I'm very, very depressed," Tarantino told Deadline. "I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn't mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it's gotten out today."

Tarantino learned of the leak when his agent, Mike Simpson, began receiving phone calls about the script. The director said he had given the "Hateful Eight" script to three actors he has worked with before: Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Tim Roth.

Tarantino absolved Roth and said, "One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood. I don't know how these Ö agents work, but I'm not making this next. I'm going to publish it, and that's it for now." He added, "I've got 10 more where that came from."

Back in November, Tarantino went on "The Tonight Show" and told Jay Leno his next film would be a western. "I had so much fun making 'Django' and I love westerns so much, that after I taught myself how to make one I thought, it's like, wow OK, let me make another one now that I know what I'm doing," he said.

Tarantino fans do have reason to be hopeful, however, as the director admitted, "I could totally change my mind." He also said he has another script in mind. "The idea was, I was going to write two scripts," Tarantino said. "I wasn't going to shoot the western until next winter, and I have been full of piss and vinegar about the other one. So now Iíll do that one."

Quentin Tarantino is out for revenge — no kidding this time.
The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing his script for the planned Western The Hateful Eight, a project he says he has now shelved because of the leak.

The lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court states: “Jury trial demanded.”
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The document is signed by famed entertainment attorney Martin Singer, but the text of the lawsuit sounds a lot like Tarantino himself: “Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck. This time they went too far,” it reads. “Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the
journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally. Their headline boasts ‘Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script’ – ‘Here,’ not someplace else, but ‘Here’ on the Gawker website”

The main thing enraging the director were several hyperlinks directing readers to download the screenplay themselves. “There was nothing newsworthy or journalistic about Gawker Media facilitating and encouraging the public’s violation of Plaintiff’s copyright in the Screenplay, and it’s conduct will not shield Gawker Media from liability for their unlawful activity,” the lawsuit states.

Tarantino claims he distributed the script to a small handful of people, and discovered on Jan. 21 that unauthorized copies were making the rounds, “albeit in a limited manner (i.e., online search engine searches for a copy of the script, through January 23, did not have any positive results).” The lawsuit also states: “After learning of the leak, Plaintiff decided to postpone working on the movie, and stated publicly — in an interview that was widely reported in the media — that he intended to publish it.”

The filmmaker alleges the script might have stayed out of the public eye until Gawker published this story the next day: Quentin Tarantino Throws Temper Tantrum After Script Leak.

The suit asserts that Gawker “actively solicited its readers to provide it with an unauthorized infringing copy of the Screenplay, stating “if anyone would like to … leak the script to us, please do so at [redacted email address].”

If Gawker hadn’t published their findings, Tarantino believes “that the general public would not have known about or found the complete copy of the Screenplay,” according to the suit, which also names anonymous users of the website AnonFiles.com as defendants, for allegedly uploading his screenplay to that site.

Tarantino is seeking an injunction against the sites that would stop them from further disseminating the screenplay, and asks the court for unspecified damages exceeding $1 million.

The filmmaker’s reps declined to comment on the lawsuit. Gawker publisher Nick Denton also did not immediately respond for request for his site’s side of the story, and a request left with the general media inquiry address has not yet been answered.